How to Prioritize Your Cybersecurity Budget

Spending on Information Security (InfoSec) technology and solutions is up sharply. According to technology research giant Gartner, Inc., it will reach a staggering $114 billion globally this year. This is a 12.4% increase from last year, with another 9% increase in spending expected in 2019.

Of course, allocating massive budgets to InfoSec technology is still better than the losses on multiple fronts that come from network and data breaches. Yet, like any other problem, throwing piles of cash at the problem won’t automatically solve your digital safety issues.

You need to know how to properly invest your cybersecurity budget to get the most bang for your buck in securing your IT perimeter and improving your threat detection capabilities.

Here are our recommendations in order of priority:

Visibility

While creating the digital equivalent of a walled fortress around your network may be a tempting prospect, it’s probably not the best course of action because not everything in your network needs the same level of security.

With limited resources, it’s impossible to focus on every threat, and some will be higher-priority than others. You need to be able to tell the difference between them to know where to focus your additional efforts. That means you must improve your visibility to discover which parts of your network need the most protection.

Visibility is a vital yet underappreciated aspect of InfoSec. With new mobile devices constantly connecting to your network in today’s BYOD culture, the continual creation of new databases, and the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), it’s possible for whole digital assets to simply vanish from your detection capabilities. Security holes could linger—and never be questioned.

Visibility means understanding the full extent of what’s in your network, what high-value databases it contains, and where you need to enforce the strongest levels of surveillance. Your cybersecurity budget must reflect those priorities.

Upgrading

Do you still use a legacy solution for security analytics, SIEM, or endpoint security? You shouldn’t.

The logic of keeping an existing system is that it has worked so far. That shortsighted approach fails to recognize that the nature of today’s threats has changed. It’s likely that your legacy solution can’t withstand fileless malware, social engineering, and erroneous login attempts.

Is it still being supported by the solution provider? Can it even be updated to face these new threats? Should it be updated, or is a new solution in order? Actually, trying to update your old solution might just be courting disaster.

Legacy solutions may create integration issues that lead to optimization failures and security holes. If they are seriously outdated, they can actually become their own security problem!

Start over from the beginning by looking at your industry, your company, and the digital threats you are likely to face. Make sure you have the right solution to protect your company. Then look at the possible solutions, with your existing solution being just one of the options.

You may find that it’s time to upgrade to a new solution that’s a better fit for your situation.

Detection

In the early days of cybersecurity, the main threat was from malware. Accordingly, many enterprise decision makers still believe investing in their IT perimeter and in preventative measures is the best course of action.

While malware is still a concern, it isn’t the threat it once was. Likewise, the enterprise IT perimeter is far more porous than it once was, so the best practice in cybersecurity has shifted from prevention to detection.

Make sure you do the same. Invest in threat intelligence, security alerts, security event correlation, and investigative tools. Your budget will go further and so will your security.